


Distant waves (here to destroy you)

by strawberriesandtophats



Series: No such things as stability (only flux) [4]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Body Image, Canon Disabled Character, M/M, Only One Bed, Poverty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24356044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberriesandtophats/pseuds/strawberriesandtophats
Summary: Vimes had grown up feeling cold.
Relationships: Havelock Vetinari/Samuel Vimes
Series: No such things as stability (only flux) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758511
Comments: 7
Kudos: 60





	Distant waves (here to destroy you)

**Author's Note:**

> Even more dad bod Vimes fic! :D

Vimes had grown up feeling cold.

The house that they’d lived in the longest on Cockbill Street hadn’t had much of anything that could be considered to be insulation and they’d spent their winters sleeping in all their clothes in the kitchen, wrapped up in knitted blankets and lying as close to the oven as they could.

There had barely been money for food, even with his mum working all hours and him working nights as a Lance Constable. They just had enough for rent and soap.

Most of their food was second-hand, a neighbor bringing them bowls of soup in exchange for some knitted gloves or help with the kids, or big mugs of strong coffee handed over because a sailor in the family had brought some from overseas where it was cheaper.

Some months Vimes only had Snouty’s porridge to look forward to at the end of a shift, having shoved a soft-boiled egg into his mouth on his way out the door before he’ walked to work. His mum ate her one hot meal at work too. She tried to hide the sad expression on face those mornings when Vimes came home with a sack of apples or a jar or two of pickled onions because he’d helped unload a few carts before the markets opened up at dawn.

Some days Vimes had lived on coffee-spiked cocoa alone, pressing his lips together as he passed by hot-chair eating places like Harga’s House of Ribs and stalls selling cross-buns and cheese-and-onion pies and fried fish.

Some hours he’d wondered if he’d pass out from hunger on the street, hoping to hell that no one would commit a crime in front of him because he didn’t have the energy reserves for running.

The cigars he sometimes bought if he’d picked up enough coins from the cobblestones to be able to afford a pack or two a week helped, distracting him enough to make him forget for minutes at a time that hunger was clawing at his stomach.

He lived his life in the hopes of coming home to two bowls of Distressed Pudding, because the neighbor that worked in a kitchen had swapped half a cup of cream and almond scraps for two of his mother’s romance novels.

And sometimes, there would be berry mush or jam on top of the cream, his spoon sinking into rice pudding and almond scraps.

It wasn’t like that anymore.

He was a Commander now, not a Lance-Constable, he had a wonderful wife and a son, and a very good life. He even had another spouse that loved him.

He could afford to eat at all the restaurants in the city, he didn’t have to worry where his next meal would come from because it could come from anywhere he liked.

Still, after all those years on the night shift and eating mostly at Harga’s House of Ribs meant that simply wasn’t used to eating three meals a day. One meal a day was more like it, with some coffee in between and perhaps a biscuit.

He didn’t walk the streets at night in a uniform that didn’t keep him warm, soaked to the bone and wondering if he’d be dead by morning.

That didn’t mean that he wasn’t made of memories.

He still found himself staring in wonder at the fruit bowl on his desk at Pseudopolis Yard, at the coffee mug that Drumknott handed him in the mornings before meetings, at the snacks that Sybil and Wilikins made sure to stick into his work bag.

A lifetime of walking the streets and being cold meant that he kept the window in his office open, because he was not used to feeling warm. The fact that his body had grown softer now and kept him warm was a constant source of mixed emotions.

He still wasn’t used to how bulky he looked out of uniform, some part of his mind still insisting that he should be able to feel his hip bones and ribs easily, that the layer of fat on top of the muscles was nothing but a steady illusion. Instead his thighs spread out when he sat down, his sides were soft to the touch when he pulled on his trousers, his arms didn’t look like noodles.

Sitting on the edge of the massive bed in the Patrician’s bedroom in the Palace in nothing but an undershirt and a pair of drawers, Vimes forced himself to keep his hands flat on the sheet instead of rolling up the undershirt and looking down at the purple and red stretch marks. He kept himself as still as he could for a few minutes, then just crawled into bed and pulled both the sheets and the knitted blanket he’d made over himself. There were a lot of stretch marks, most of them had faded and become silver.

He did not poke at his new eyepatch or the scar on his face, no matter how much he wanted to. The stitches were neat and tidy, the pain meds were working and the area was clean.

Vetinari was still in the bathroom, washing up and injecting medicine and getting ready for bed in all sorts of ways. There was no need for him to wheel himself into the bedroom only to see that Vimes was scowling at the fact that his stomach had become even softer without his permission.

Both Sybil and Vetinari treated his body gently, far better than he did himself. They insisted on rest after he’d worked himself hard enough so that he fell asleep still standing and leaning against walls, they made sure that he had days off and took his medicine.

He could still remember with frankly disturbing clarity the horror in Vetinari’s eyes this afternoon when Vimes had returned from chasing two serial killers and bank robbers all the way to Quirm, coming back home after three weeks of no sleep and endless fights.

“I’d thought you’d like the eyepatch,” Vimes had said, gesturing at it and the fresh and still smarting scar on his face. It had been sewn up and cleaned properly already at the Lady Sybil Free Hospital, his fingers wrapped up in bandages just like his knuckles.

He hadn’t eaten much for weeks, because there had only been the thrill of the chase and then the endless paperwork after the high of it had passed. A part of him had been pleased with that, reminding him that he could still manage just fine without food for a few days as he had when he’d been young.

“It is very dashing,” Vetinari had said, gesturing to the chair so that Vimes could collapse into it. “Are there any more injuries?”

“Nothing broken,” Vimes had replied, ignoring how his knees complained and his muscles all told him that he wouldn’t be getting up any time soon. He waited for Vetinari to make an impatient humming sound, disbelieving. “Nothing that won’t heal.”

“I’ll have something brought up for you to eat,” Vetinari said.

“I’m fine,” Vimes said, closing his eyes. He’d managed to get a hold of some bad boots, the cardboard soles so thin that he’d felt the cobblestones underneath his feet as soon as he’d come back to their city.

With only one eye working properly and head and body screaming at him in pain because they were not used to this kind of constant action and stress for weeks, he trusted his feet to tell him when he was back home.

He was still that soaking wet, bony Lance-Constable in the dented uniform, with nothing in his pockets expect half a cigar not enough change to last him the week. And he was also the Commander of the Watch, the backs of his ankles bloody from running and standing in the most magnificent office in the city with the man that he loved, being treated well.

No one would shove him into an alley for looking at boys in an admiring way, then break his fingers and ribs. And people would think twice about doing that at all these days, with a functioning Watch and Vetinari as the ruler.

How far they’d come.

“Are you doing fine?” Vetinari had asked. “When was the last time that you ate a proper meal?”

Vimes had wanted to argue that proper meals were for people that had more actual room in their stomachs because they had not starved as children. That Vetinari lived off toast, boiled eggs and all kinds of salads. That proper meals left him with a body that held onto all that extra energy by storing it away, made him feel odd and usually did not have burnt crunchy bits in them.

Even with all the running and proceeding and fighting he’d done in the past few weeks, his uniform still fit much the same as it had before. He’d expected his shirt to be much looser, at least. And it hadn’t been, at all.

It made him feel as if this was the physical manifestation of not just his age, but the fact that one day his knees, damaged liver and lungs and heart as well as this unwelcome addition would one day conspire against him so that he'd be forced to...move out of the way.

But not yet.

He still had a few good years in him, if the gleam in the Patrician's eyes was anything to go with.

“A few days,” Vimes had replied. It was no use to in lying. Vetinari would find out about it anyway. He’d had coffee and some biscuits down at the station earlier, which had made it possible for him to reach the Palace.

“Hm,” Vetinari said, which meant that he’d have a conversation with the cooks downstairs and that Vimes might find a treat of some kind with his main meal. It had happened before.

And in fact there had been a small bowl of chocolate pudding beside his dinner. The sort that he could never have eaten as a kid because it was only served to nobs. It had chocolate shavings on it and grated orange zest.

He hadn’t taken a single bite of that pudding.

Vimes rolled to his side, pressing his cheek against the cool pillow and closing his eyes in the hope that he’d be plunged right into darkness and sleep.

Outside, in the streets, the air grew colder.

But the bed was warm.

“It’s good to have you back,” Vetinari said, wheeling himself to the bed in his nightshirt and his face shiny with cream.

Vimes thought of all the officers that had left the Watch, all those years ago because they’d been told again and again that they were bottom-of-the-barrel folks that deserved to be abused and maltreated and beaten up in alleys by strangers and their own coworkers for the crime of loving each other or having a sweetheart that was not approved of. Now many of them had returned, waving at him as they passed by or catching up when they visited their old Watch houses.

None of them made any comments about how they did not recognize him after all these years, or how much he’d changed. There were no brittle recollections of how they’d once both been scrawny and scared together on patrol. No, they had donuts and coffee with Colon instead, regaled the new recruits with stories of how much and little had changed and grinned at Vimes when he verified that some of the most outrageous stories were in fact true.

“It’s good to be back,” Vimes said. “And I caught the bastards, too.”

“Yes,” Vetinari said, with a vicious tilt beneath the calm tone as the medicine box rattled as he uncapped it. “And that is how we rewrite the world.”

“By catching a few murderers?” Vimes asked, watching as Vetinari swallowed the pills, his hair neatly braided for the night and smelling like the mint lotion he put on the scars on his leg.

“Catching them means that they will no longer cause harm, and arresting them hinders other criminals to follow in their footsteps,” Vetinari said. “And it is good for everyone to see you chasing after them, Commander. It reminds them that the system works.”

“The new Captain I spoke to in the Quirm nick didn’t agree with that,” Vimes said. “He told me that a man so highly ranked as I am should be expected to stick to managing his officers, making sure that everything was running smoothly and doing heaps of paperwork. Not running after thieves and murderers-“

The Captain hadn’t liked Vimes’s pink shirt with the blue and purple flowers on it, which Vimes had put on after he’d caught the murderers and done his share of the paperwork, having taken a shower and intending to have a cigar and a non-alcoholic drink in the sunshine as a treat. He’d told him that it was neither stylish nor subdued enough for someone like the Commander of the biggest and best Watch on the Disc.

Vimes had responded by ordering the most colorful drink on the menu at the outdoor café beside the Watch HQ and pulling out his romance novel.

The man had made a very interesting face, then turned away muttering as Vimes raised the bright orange and pink drink, complete with a slice of pineapple and a bendy straw at him.

The drink had tasted like fresh oranges and sunshine.

“I take it that he doesn’t like being on active duty,” Vetinari said. “But the perils of being the best, so to speak, are that you have to continue being the very best.”

“He would rather let his Lance-Constables do the chasing,” Vimes muttered, thinking about the man’s shiny breastplate and his paperwork-free desk. Even his filing cabinets had been shinier than the sturdy ones Inspector Pessimal had put into Vimes’s office.

“No plans to run away to Quirm for a few months to bring their crime rate down, then?” Vetinari asked, climbing into bed. “I heard that an offer had been made to pay the family that lives in the old Ramkin townhouse to move out-”

“Bold of you to assume that I’d listened to that, my lord,” Vimes said, opening his eyes. “You know that I’m not going to-“

Vetinari turned to him with a smile like a lightning strike.

“Indeed,” he said, stealing Vimes’s knitted blanket. “I do.”

“Why do you ask me if you already know?” Vimes grumbled, resisting the urge to just arrest Vetinari for theft and be done with it. “You-“

“It brings me emotional security,” Vetinari said, spreading the blanket over them both after he’d pulled the duvet over himself. “I suspect that all kinds of negotiations with Quirm will become _beautifully tricky_ for a while now, with the Captain unhappy with you and spreading that feeling everywhere.”

“Enjoy untangling that problem, my lord,” Vimes said, adjusting his duvet. “I’m going to sleep.”

He lay on his back, listening to Vetinari’s regular breathing.

His own breathing had become steady and deep when he felt Vetinari shift.

“May I?”

“Hm?” Vimes said, expecting that Vetinari had put on his medical hat and wanted to look underneath the eyepatch to see the damage or to inspect his fingers. Or that he was going to make some suggestion about the eyepatch and teenage fascination with a certain Sergeant before climbing Vimes like an oak tree.

But Vetinari’s hand was underneath the duvet, fingers inches away from Vimes’s middle but not touching it.

“I didn’t get sliced up like a piece of ham, if that is what you are thinking about,” Vimes said. “There aren’t any wounds. Or bandages.”

“You only wear your undershirt to bed when you are injured,” Vetinari said. “Or when it gets so cold that the ink freezes in my inkwells.”

Vimes stared at him.

“It’s not that,” Vimes said, taking Vetinari’s hand and putting it down on top of the undershirt. “I just wanted that extra layer. For-“

“Warmth?” Vetinari asked, looking curious. His hand slowly stroked over the material, as if searching for hidden bandages underneath it of the sort that were made with snail glue and a small piece of cloth.

It had been weeks since someone had touched Vimes beyond a slap on the back or a formal handshake, so he found himself leaning into the touch more than he thought he would.

“Peace of mind,” Vimes said.

The last time they’d been in bed, Vetinari had kissed down his stomach with aching slowness as Vimes had buried his hands in his hair, both of them sweaty and shaking with pleasure already. It had taken months of negotiation to get to that stage.

“The chainmail and breastplate are heavy enough that they press against the body enough on good days,” Vimes said, willing his breath not to catch as Vetinari oh so carefully ran his hands underneath the undershirt, fingertips brushing against his skin. “It’s better to-“

“Ah,” Vetinari said. “I see.”

His hand did not move lower, where certain parts of Vimes were taking an interest in the proceedings.

“It’s not a problem right now,” Vimes said. “Help me get if off.”

“Are you certain?” Vetinari asked. “I don’t want to push you-“

“Yes,” Vimes said, already pulling at the fabric, no matter how his hands complained. “I want it gone so we can move onto kissing each other until we’ve both forgotten our own names.”

The undershirt was gone, then thrown with force on the floor.

Vetinari pulled him closer and they met in the middle, tangling their limbs together underneath the warm duvet. The kisses weren’t gentle nor soft, noses bumping and nails digging into each other’s backs as they tried to get as close as possible.

They kissed until their skin was slick with sweat and they could barely keep their eyes open, no matter how wild their heartbeats were.

Vimes stuck one foot out of the duvet when Vetinari was truly asleep, muttering about philosophy and filing cabinets. His body still thrummed with pleasure and basket in this perfect temperature and moment, with Vetinari’s hand in his own and the silence of the city all around.

He closed his eyes and let himself drift away.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are encouraged and welcome!


End file.
